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Nine takes a hit like no other.
They watch, and they feel, and they whisper. They share the pain of each and every hit. His blood pours from their wounds, stains their hands, carries their dreams.
Run, they whisper, and he runs, feint, they whisper, and he feints, fight they whisper and he fights, and he fights, and he fights.
Where they would fall, he rises, not knowing it is their hands which lift him up, over and over again. He walks in the air, held aloft by broken spirits, beaten and bruised and buried. And they lift him.
He grows weary. This mission of his — this path he has chosen — it eats at him. They eat at him, cannot help themselves; such is the corrosive nature of dreams.
He hardly eats. He hardly sleeps. They watch over him when he dares, pressing down like weighted blankets numbered half a dozen and one. And when he wakes they walk with him, talk with him, show him what to do and where to go and trust him to ignore them when they are wrong.
And he takes hits. Nine’s blood is scattered across Musutafu, spilled on bricks and stones and grass and in the river and the sky. He takes hits because nobody else can, not the way he does. He takes hits because he cannot, will not give up.
His classmates come after him, and with nothing left inside of him he still fights. His eyes fight to stay open, his stomach cramps and rumbles and screams, and they scream, and he does not listen because he believes they are wrong. All of them.
Nine takes a hit no worse than those he has taken a hundred, a thousand times before, but it’s too much. Too much too soon, all at once, not ready. Not yet. He falls. They start to fall with him, blinking out as he loses consciousness, as his classmates ready themselves to catch him —
His will surges through them. His eyes pinch shut. Seven spirits reach, and grab, and lift. They tell the body to move, and it moves. They tell it to dodge left, and it dodges, they tell it to run and it runs. They tell it to wake, and it does not wake.
Nine is still there. He is still there, in the darkest recesses of that place, curled where the light does not quite reach. He is so small, and so tired. They tell him to wake and he does not stir.
And by now his friends have seen that something is wrong; the way Nine’s body moves is different when he is not in the driver’s seat, the way each move is jerky and imprecise as seven hands work to guide it in the way they each think is best. They try to argue and the words fall from his mouth, jumbled and half-formed.
Wake, they command him, fear brimming in the body’s heart, the heart that beats that pounds with their blood. Please, Nine, wake, they beg, and the body does not wake.
Let him go, says one of the children, her voice soft, pleading. I know you want to protect him, but you’re only hurting him, please, look at him!
But they can’t, not with him asleep and all of them within the body, stuck, trapped, desperate to guide him, to carry him —
Not all of us.
Eight stands below, in the distance, watching — and they see themselves, stuffed into Nine’s exhausted body, fighting for control, for his safety, for his hopes and his dreams and his blood no longer spilled.
Please, he says.
They let go.